Victim: Misbehaving cop struck before

A federal suit says ex-San Diego police Officer Anthony Arevalos abused women for years and the department failed to act.

Anthony Arevalos looks at the jury during the reading of his verdict in 2011. Arevalos who had been on the police force 18 years, was convicted of seeking sexual favors from women he stopped for DUI.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Anthony Arevalos looks at the jury during the reading of his verdict in 2011. Arevalos who had been on the police force 18 years, was convicted of seeking sexual favors from women he stopped for DUI.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

San Diego  A federal lawsuit filed by a woman sexually assaulted by San Diego police Officer Anthony Arevalos contains new allegations and details that police supervisors knew about his misconduct toward female suspects by the late 1990s and repeatedly failed to take action against him.

The woman who brought the suit had complained to police that Arevalos had assaulted her inside a convenience store restroom, leading to the department’s investigation of the officer. Arevalos, 42, was convicted in 2011 on charges involving five women, including seeking sexual bribes from them.

The former 18-year veteran of the department is serving a nearly nine-year sentence in Corcoran state prison.

The lawyers for the woman in the federal suit filed a revised complaint this month that includes a deposition from a retired San Diego police officer who says Arevalos in 1998 took photographs of a naked and mentally unstable woman committing a lewd act in the back of his patrol vehicle. The retired officer said he told two sergeants about the incident.

The other incidents detailed in the complaint occurred in 2001, 2007 and 2010, and in each incident it’s alleged that department supervisors were told about Arevalos’ conduct.

A Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit and referred all questions to the City Attorney’s Office. Jonathan Heller, a spokesman for City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, declined to comment on the allegations because of the ongoing litigation.

After Arevalos was convicted, Police Chief Bill Lansdowne said that suspicions fellow officers had about Arevalos’ misconduct never reached the “upper echelons” of his administration. He has been chief since August 2003.

“Clearly, there were some red flags that should have been reported but weren’t. We’re going to be addressing all of those issues,” Lansdowne said at the time.

The federal lawsuit brought by Arevalos’ victim alleges the department has an unwritten policy of covering up and downplaying reports of misconduct, and of categorizing what should be serious complaints as low-level “public service inquiries” that don’t trigger an internal investigation.

The suit calls for an outside monitor to oversee how the Police Department handles complaints of officer misconduct. Linda Workman, one of the lawyers representing the victim, declined to elaborate on the new court filings.

Here is what a review of hundreds of pages of depositions, statements and reports from the lawsuit shows:

• Retired Officer Francisco Torres said in a deposition he was Arevalos’ backup for an incident in 1998 or 1999 when a call came in of a naked, mentally unstable woman at a park in south San Diego. He and Arevalos took the woman to Paradise Valley Hospital in National City.

Torres said he went inside to get hospital staff to help with her. When he came out, he said, he witnessed Arevalos taking two Polaroid photos of the woman engaged in a sexual act with his baton.

Torres said he reported the incident that night to his supervisor, Sgt. Danny Hollister, who became visibly upset with Torres for telling him about it. He told Torres to report it that night to Arevalos’ supervisor, then-Sgt. Rudy Tai.

Torres said he did so, and Tai told him he would speak to Arevalos about it. Later that same night, Torres said Tai told him he had spoken to Arevalos about the incident. “Tony said he didn’t take any pictures, but if he did he got rid of them,” Tai told Torres.

It’s unknown if the department investigated the incident. No criminal charges were ever filed by the District Attorney’s Office. Tai is now a lieutenant and head of the criminal intelligence unit.

Torres said he believes he experienced repercussions for making the report. He said in the following weeks, Hollister gave him loads of paperwork and said he was not writing enough citations, among other things. Eventually, Torres transferred to another squad, believing he had been punished.

“I felt that because of me bringing the incident forward it was bringing my career, you know, down, because I had come forward and reported misconduct on behalf of another officer,” he said in the deposition.

Tai did not respond to a message seeking comment on the allegations. A request through the department’s public information office for a comment from Hollister, who is a sergeant in the traffic division, also was not responded to.

• In another deposition, a woman said Arevalos molested her during a traffic stop in 2001. She was pregnant at the time. She said she reported the incident to the police and met with then-San Diego Police Chief David Bejarano. (He’s now Chula Vista’s police chief).

Bejarano said this week that he doesn’t recall the incident and that he did not meet personally with people who made complaints about officers.

The woman said she dropped the matter until she saw news reports of Arevalos’ arrest and prosecution in 2011.

• A draft version of a memorandum written by the prosecutor who convicted Arevalos described an incident in 2007. A 16-year-old girl said she was “creeped out” after an encounter with Arevalos. He pulled her over a short distance from her family’s La Jolla home and told her that her registration tags were about to expire. She was returning from the beach and was dressed in a bikini top and short skirt.

She said Arevalos insisted she get out of her car and look at the tags, telling her to “bend over” as he stood behind her.

When she got home, she immediately told her father, who called a family friend, San Diego police Sgt. Art Bowen, to complain.

The draft memo said Bowen called Arevalos’ supervisor, Sgt. Max Verduzco, and sent a message to him over the department’s mobile communications system. Verduzco defended the stop and got into a heated argument with the girl’s father over his complaint.

Lawyers for the woman who filed the lawsuit said no record of the father’s complaint is in Arevalos’ personnel file, which a federal judge reviewed. The lawyers also allege the message Bowen said he sent to Verduzco did not show up in a review of all messages archived at that time.

Verduzco could not be reached for comment. He and Bowen are both retired from the department.

• In February 2010, a woman identified as Jane Roe, who is also suing the department in federal court, was arrested after a single-car drunken driving crash. In a deposition, she said Arevalos took her to the Las Colinas jail in Santee, and on the way he stopped his car and sexually assaulted her.

The woman said she made a complaint to internal affairs officers that night. Two days later when she checked on the complaint’s status, she said she was told there was no record of it. She eventually spoke to a detective and identified Arevalos,

After Arevalos’ arrest, department officials told reporters that police had investigated the woman’s complaint and turned over the findings to the District Attorney’s Office, which did not file charges.

Deputy District Attorney Sherry Thompson, who successfully convicted Arevalos for other incidents, recounted the Las Colinas case in the draft version of her sentencing memo. In the document, now part of the federal civil case file, Thompson wrote that the complaint was not initially investigated because it was classified as a “public service inquiry” and not as a criminal complaint.

Thompson wrote that five days after the woman said she was assaulted, investigators analyzed the automatic vehicle locator system — a GPS-type device — on Arevalos’ car. There was an 89-second gap when the car was beneath a freeway underpass, she said.

The woman had said Arevalos wore blue gloves when he assaulted her. Thompson wrote that a pair of such gloves were found on the roadside where the signal for the vehicle locator system was lost. Neither the woman’s nor Arevalos’ DNA or any other evidence could be recovered from the gloves.

No charges were filed because of a “lack of corroboration” to the allegations from the woman, Thompson wrote in the memo.

Arevalos was pulled off patrol while the incident was investigated but eventually returned to traffic work. Several of the assaults he was convicted of occurred after this incident.

The incidents involving the mentally unstable woman in the park, the 16-year-old girl and the 2010 assault were detailed in three pages of Thompson’s draft memo for Arevalos’ sentencing. They were dropped from the final memo that was submitted in the case.

Thompson was out of town this week.﻿ Steve Walker, a spokesman for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, said the information was edited out for a specific reason. “When we prepare memos to be used as part of a sentencing hearing we can only include information that is relevant and admissible,” he said. “Confidential drafts of sentencing memos can undergo several revisions.”

The lawyers for the woman suing in federal court have been seeking access for months to city personnel and other records. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Bartick issued a lengthy ruling Friday ordering the city to turn over most of the documents.

The judge wrote that he was concerned “with the city’s refusal to produce documents in this case, many of which are clearly relevant and discoverable based on prior court rulings involving the city as defendant.”

The city has so far paid $1.4 million in legal settlements to 11 people who were victimized by Arevalos.